


After The Ever After

by EyesHalfFamiliar



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Pining Lotor, bittersweet angst drabble, grieving Keith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-26
Updated: 2018-01-26
Packaged: 2019-03-09 21:43:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13490355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EyesHalfFamiliar/pseuds/EyesHalfFamiliar
Summary: It's been eighty years since the fall of Zarkon's Empire and Keith and Shiro started their life together. Now, that life has come to its natural conclusion, and Keith approaches an old friend for advice on starting over.(Just come cry with me about galra Keith's longer lifespan, okay?)





	After The Ever After

**Author's Note:**

> I saw a post on Tumblr about Keith outliving Shiro due to his galra heritage, and it just wrecked me. This story basically spawned itself in my head, and I had to write it down before I could do anything else. So... Here you go! XD

Lotor didn’t expect the visit, but perhaps he should have. The funeral had only been a month ago, but Keith had never stayed still for long, not without his husband as a tether.

He cancelled the rest of his appointments for the day and ushered his guest into a private room with a wide window overlooking the stars.

“To what do I owe this visit?”

Keith didn’t answer at first. His eyes were drawn out to the void, distant and nostalgic in a way that Lotor had rarely seen him. The gleam of gold rings on the silver chain around Keith’s neck drew his eye. Before, there had been one; now there were two, one larger than the other.

“You’ve lived a long time right?” Keith asked, drawing Lotor’s gaze back to his face.

It had been almost eighty years since the final battle, since the fall of Zarkon and Haggar and the dissolution of the Empire. Even the youngest of the paladins had gone grey with age, and here Keith stood on strong limbs. Not quite young, but less than middle aged. His frame had filled out and his features matured, and there were lines starting to form around his eyes, but his hair was still dark and his eyes still bright, and his limbs moved freely.

A gift from his galra mother, no doubt.

Lotor himself was hardly changed at all. By the grace or curse of his parents’ experiments, he was all but locked in place, like a boulder sitting stubbornly in the stream of time. If he was wearing away at all, it was so slowly he could not perceive it.

“Since before Daibazaal’s destruction,” Lotor confirmed. Keith knew this, of course, but Lotor was willing to indulge him.

“You’ve lost people before, outlived them,” Keith said. “What… How do you…?”

He heard Keith’s throat catch, recognized his grimace as an attempt to hold back tears. Lotor didn’t know what he’d do if he broke down here. Mercifully, Keith collected himself, cleared his throat.

“How do you deal with it?”

Lotor thought before answering. Keith, perhaps more than anyone, deserved his honesty.

“I’ve never had someone who meant what Shiro meant to you,” he said at last. “But you are right to say I know loss.”

Though the universe had rarely been so kind as to give him that loss as the result of old age, fading out gently in the peace of sleep after a life well-lived. No, for Lotor it was blood and betrayal and theft by poison or at the point of a blade and swearing _never again_ , but the stars only knew he’d never kept that promise for more than a thousand years at a time.

“I’ve tried forgetting, and I’ve tried remembering. Both hurt in their way. The pain never leaves. You will always carry it with you. But you will grow around the pain until eventually it is only one part of you.”

He looked over at Keith and was not surprised to see tears on his face, though he made no sound.

“It will not always consume you as it does now.” He said it gently. There had always been gentleness in him for Keith. There was too much understanding between them for it to be otherwise.

“Come.” Lotor went over to a cabinet and touched the pad to unlock it. He pulled out a bottle of liquor imported from the Sol system and two glasses. “It is a human tradition to drink to the fallen, is it not?”

“It is.” Keith’s mouth quirked up approvingly as he accepted his glass. Lotor poured some for each of them.

“To Shiro.” He raised his glass.

“To Shiro,” Keith agreed, voice rough. He clinked their glasses together.

Lotor sipped his drink, tasting the flavor and the burn. Keith downed his glass in one go, and Lotor half expected him to ask for another.

“Usually, you pour some on the ground,” Keith said. “You know, for the people who can’t be here.”

He looked at the cold, metal floor and huffed.

“Doesn’t really work on a spaceship, though.”

Lotor shrugged and tipped the bottle. It wasn’t like he was the one who would clean it up.

As soon as the liquor hit the floor, a small panel at the base of the wall opened and a tiny droid whirred out frantically to mop up the spill. One of Pidge’s inventions. The day she’d finalized the design, Lance had been present and insisted on the addition of absurd plastic eyes that spun wildly when the droid moved.

Keith burst out laughing, so loud and sudden that Lotor startled at it.

“You _kept_ those?” he asked, delighted, disbelieving.

Lotor was surprised at it himself, to be honest. But Ezor and Zethrid had found them adorable, and he’d even caught Acxa cooing over one after a careless soldier stepped on it, so he’d resigned himself to the mild indignity.

Seeing Keith’s face now - tear-stained, but stretched in a shining smile - erased any doubts he had surrounding the decision.

“They are… good for morale.”

Keith laughed again, quieter this time. His eyes were still sad, but the smile stayed.

“I should visit the others,” he said.

“I’m sure they’d enjoy that.”

Keith had seen them at the funeral, of course, as had Lotor, but Keith had been far removed from his usual self. He’d looked so flat then, blank and unresponsive, as if the fires that always animated him had at last been quenched. It was a relief to see that grief had only banked those embers, not smothered them.

“And after that…” Keith trailed off, introspective again. “I don’t know. I guess I’ll have to find something else to do. Something new.”

“I’m sure I could find a use for a pilot of your skill,” Lotor offered. “If you’re interested.”

“Yeah?” Keith raised an eyebrow. “Is being the first galran king in more than 10,000 years giving you trouble?”

Lotor chuckled.

“Contending with the resentments of an entire universe while balancing the interests of dispersed galran settlements with the reparations necessary for those they displaced? No trouble at all.” He shook his head. “But for you, I’m thinking more of colony defense and high-risk transport. Any piloting mission that I think might become… interesting. The universe is still a dangerous place, even without my father’s Empire.”

“Sounds interesting.” Keith tapped his empty glass thoughtfully. “Yeah. I could do that for a while, after I visit the guys.”

“Another drink?” Lotor offered.

“Trying to get me to stay longer?” Keith asked jokingly, but he held out his glass anyway.

“You might as well,” Lotor pointed out as he poured for them both. “It’s too late in the quintent to make it far before you’d need rest, and I have a room made up for you already.”

“Always planning ahead,” Keith said, and Lotor didn’t think it was wishful thinking to read fondness in his voice. “Alright. I’ll crash here for the night. Thanks for… all of this.”

“Anytime, my friend.”


End file.
